Last year in November, we announced Microsoft Teams data residency for the UK. Starting Feb 6th, 2018 Microsoft Teams will also provide data residency for India. This means that all new Microsoft Teams customers in India will have data for conversations and chat stored at rest in India. New customers are new subscriptions/tenants that provision after Feb 6th 2018 or customers who have not yet used the service prior to this date.Teams data residency in India, as well as our other Office 365 data residency commitments in the datacenter geo in India, help regulated organizations, like in banking, public sector, government, and healthcare, onboard to Teams and Office 365 while complying with their data residency requirements.

Core Teams customer data: The core Teams customer data consists of chat and channel messages, associated media and all the teams and channels present in the tenant.

Chat/ channel messages & team structure Every team in Microsoft Teams is backed by an Office 365 Modern Group and its SharePoint site and Exchange mailbox. Private chats (including group chats), messages sent as part of a conversation in a channel, and the structure of teams and channels are stored in an Azure powered chat service. The data is also stored in a hidden folder in the user and group mailboxes to enable information protection features.

Images and Media: Media used in chats (except for Giphy GIFs which are not stored but are a reference link to the original Giphy URL) is stored in an Azure based Media Service that are deployed to the same locations as the chat service.

Data in the Azure Chat Service and the Azure Media Service is currently stored in-geo in 5 geos across the world:”

AMER [Americas – North and South]: datacenters in Bay, CA and Boydton, VA

UK: datacenters in Cardiff and London

NEW! India: datacenters in Chennai and Pune

Our goal is to provide in-geo data residency for Teams in all other Office 365 geos, including Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea and more.

Files: Files (including OneNote and Wiki) that somebody shares in a channel are stored in the team’s SharePoint site. Files shared in a private chat or a chat during a meeting/call are uploaded and stored in the OneDrive for Business account of the user who shares the file. Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive already provide data residency in each of the worldwide datacenter geos. So, for existing customers, all files, OneNotes, wikis, and mailboxes that are part of the Teams experience are already stored in the geo based on your tenant affinity. Files are stored in country for Australia Canada, India, Japan, UK, South Korea and the United states. For all other countries, files are stored in the US, the EU, or APAC geo based on tenant affinity.

Customers that choose to store files with a 3d party storage provider are dependent of the storage location of those services and should therefore review the location of data at rest for those services separately.

Tabs: Tabs allow users to pin information from apps and services to a channel. Thus, it varies by type of the tab where the data is stored. The tab itself does not store any data. For example: a SharePoint tab will store data based on where the SharePoint site collection was provisioned. A tab that includes information from a partner will store the data directly in the system used by the partner and only present a view of it.

Other partner apps: Microsoft does not provide any data residency support for apps and services from partners that you might be using within the Microsoft Teams experience. Please review information from those solutions directly to learn about where their data is being stored.

FAQ

Where do I see my data location in the Office 365 admin portal?

Very recently, we have added Teams to the Data location page in the Office 365 Admin Portal under Home\Organizational Profile. This shows you the location of your Teams data, just as it does for the other workloads.

Which workloads aside Teams provide data residency in India?

Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Skype for business Online, Project Online and others already provide data residency in India. Please see the data center maps for more information about the location of data at rest for more Office 365 services and for all our geos in the world.

Where in India exactly is this data stored?

Teams Chat and Media data will be stored in the India South and India Central datacenters located in Chennai, and Pune respectively.

What does this mean for new customers in India?

From February 8th, 2018 (“Launch Date”), customers who have never previously logged into Microsoft Teams (i.e. no user in their tenant has ever accessed teams.microsoft.com or signed into any Teams client app) will have data residency in India.

What does this mean for existing customers in India?

Customers who are already using Teams will continue to have data residency for their content stored at rest in the APAC geo. Later, Microsoft will provide a migration feature to enable data migration for these existing Teams customers. This migration capability is expected sometime in FY19 and a customer may then plug into the Move program available to all Office 365 customers, the details of which can be found here.

If I have more questions, who should I talk to?

Please do not hesitate to contact your Account Team or FastTrack if you have more questions about Teams deployments and how the availability of data residency in India affects your timelines to deploy. Based on your requirements, they will recommend the best approach for you.

What is the roadmap for data residency in other countries?

Our goal is to provide data residency for Teams in all the Office 365 country-based data-centers including Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea and more in 2018 and beyond. We will also address in region to in country data migration.

Thanks again for your time in reading this, and for all the support you’ve shown towards Microsoft Teams. If you have questions or feedback, please use the comment functionality below.